High Crimes (16 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“
Your last
witness, trial counsel?” Holt said.

“Mr. Investigating Officer,” Waldron said, “I have some testimony that’s not relevant now, which I’ve prepared in response to what I anticipate the defense will put on.” Grimes looked at Claire, puzzled. “So, rather than keep Chief Warrant Officer Four Stanley Oshman around for another day and a half, I’d like to put him on now.”

“Defense, do you have any objections?” asked Holt.

Claire whispered to Grimes, “You didn’t find out who this guy is?”

“No luck,” Grimes whispered back. “It’s okay, we’ll get to cross him, help us put on our case.” Aloud, he said, “We have no objection.”

“I call as my next witness Chief Warrant Officer Oshman,” Waldron announced, “a polygraph examiner assigned to Fort Bragg.”

The courtroom stirred.

“What the hell is this?” Grimes said aloud. He looked at Claire and then at Embry. “What the
hell
is this?”

Chief Warrant Officer Stanley Oshman, slight and owlish in thick glasses, with receding blond hair, in his early forties, got up from one of the spectator seats. He had been there all along, observing. He made his way to the witness stand and was sworn in. Waldron moved swiftly through the preliminaries while Claire and Grimes watched in dull horror.

“Chief Warrant Officer Oshman,” Waldron asked, “in addition to your day-to-day responsibilities, what do you do with the Special Forces units you work with at Fort Bragg?”

“I teach them to beat the box,” Oshman said.

“Beat the box? What does that mean?”

“I teach them techniques—tricks, if you will—that enable them to beat a polygraph, in case they’re captured and interrogated behind enemy lines.”

Aloud, but ostensibly to himself, Grimes said, “Wait one goddamned second.”

“So it’s your testimony here today,” Waldron continued, “that certain Special Forces officers, like Ronald Kubik, can beat the polygraph.”

“That’s correct. He certainly can.”

“That, if he’s given a polygraph, he knows how to give the answers he wishes to, whether truthful or not, and yet most polygraph examiners will conclude that no deception is indicated.”

“That’s correct.”

Too loudly, Grimes said, “Jesus fucking Christ. Our guy can just goddamn well go home now.”

*   *   *

“Are you accusing me of leaking again?” Embry asked after the hearing was over. “Is that what you’re implying?”

“I’m not implying, I’m saying,” Grimes fulminated. “You got another explanation how Waldron knew we were going to call our polygrapher, introduce the results of the polygraph? You got another explanation, dude?”

“I have no explanation.” Even Embry’s ears were flushed. “I was just as shocked as you—”

“Oh, were you, really?” Grimes said.

“Give him a chance to talk,” Claire said.

“For what?” Grimes said bitterly. “So he can stand here and bullshit us? The prosecution just successfully knocked out our ace. You think anyone’s going to pay attention to an exculpatory polygraph taken by a guy trained to beat the box?”

Claire instinctively turned to Tom, then remembered he’d just been taken back to the brig.

“Fine,” Embry said. “I see where this is going. I can see you don’t really care what I have to say. So I’m going to make it easy for you. I’m withdrawing.”

He turned and began striding away.

“You’re still subject to attorney-client confidentiality, you asshole,” Grimes called after him. He muttered, “Not like it ever stopped you, sorry-ass motherfucker.”

Embry joined the exodus of spectators and lawyers from the courtroom. From a distance, Waldron approached the defense table. Claire wondered how much he had overheard. It wouldn’t take particularly sensitive ears to hear the heated exchange.

When he was a few feet away, Waldron spoke directly to Claire. “Captain Embry didn’t tell me anything. You owe him an apology. This is a small world, and things get around.”

Claire chose not to give him the satisfaction of pursuing the matter. Instead she said, sweetly, “Maybe you can enlighten me about something. What’s the point of conducting a trial if it’s going to be held behind closed doors? I mean, I’ve always taught that a trial is held for the purposes of demonstrating to the public that justice is being done. So where’s the public? Five anonymous guys with top-secret clearances?”

“Take it up with the secretary of the army,” Waldron said.

“I just may,” Claire replied. “But it’s clear to me that the only justification for keeping this whole business so top secret is to keep certain persons from being embarrassed. There’s clearly no real national-security justification, given that the events we’re talking about are thirteen years old.”

“The national security—” Waldron began.

“It’s just us here talking,” Claire said. “No investigating officer to play to. Just us. So we can be honest. You see, I really don’t quite get the point of putting my husband through a court-martial. Why didn’t you guys just lock him away in a loony bin?”

“That’s actually where he belongs,” Waldron shot back. “Your husband is a sociopath, a twisted, sick bastard. He demonstrated that as an assassin in Vietnam. He was a legend, a sicko legend in that covert world. But he was brilliant, he spoke a bunch of different languages and dialects perfectly, and he had no compunction about killing his fellow human beings. He was perfect for the military’s purposes. Just like the U.S. government hired those Nazis at the end of World War Two. Only the Pentagon thought they could control Kubik. But he lost it.”

“Ask yourself what the brass really want,” Claire said. “Say whatever lies you want to about my husband; the folks at the top really just want to keep all this buried. They want to make sure the fact of a U.S. massacre in El Salvador never becomes public. And we’re prepared to agree to that. You drop the charges now, and we’ll agree to complete secrecy. In writing if you want. Nothing will ever come out. But if you let this go to court-martial, you’ll destroy the chief of staff of the army. This I promise you. And I’ll go public with the story—the whole world will know. You’ve gotta ask yourself, do you really want that? He goes down, you do too.”

Waldron smiled. It was an unpleasant, feral smile, the smile of someone who rarely did. “I really don’t give a shit who wants to cover their ass. Or who goes down. My job here is to prosecute a mass murderer, to get him put in Leavenworth for the rest of his pointless life. And preferably executed. That’s my job. And I’ll do it happily. I’ll see you at trial.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Cleaning up
the kitchen after dinner, Claire and Jackie talked. Annie was getting ready for bed, brushing her teeth. Claire, exhausted and ruminative, rinsed off the dishes while Jackie loaded the dishwasher.

“Will someone please explain to me what the deal is with Eeyore?” Jackie said. “I mean, give the poor donkey some Prozac, you know?”

Claire nodded, smiled.

“And this Kubik thing. I can’t call him Ron,” Jackie said. “That’s fucked up.”

“I can’t either. I don’t know what to call him, and there’s something kind of symbolic about that. It’s as if he’s a different person, only I don’t know who or what he is. I see him for five minutes before the hearing starts, we talk business. It’s all business. He says I did a good job, or he asks me something procedural. I go to visit him in the brig, and we talk about the case. All business.”

“Isn’t that the way it should be? You’re defending him, you’re his lawyer, his life is on the line.”

“Yes, you’re right. But he’s not
there
somehow.”

“Anyone would be scared out of their mind. You mind if I ask something—did you get the polygraph results admitted?”

“Yeah, sure. But it was damaged goods. If I were the investigating officer, I’d think he beat the box because he was trained to do it.”

“And what do you think? I hate this dishwasher.”

“About what?”

“About whether he ‘beat the box’—whether he pulled one over on the examiner?”

“How can I answer that? He could have—I mean, he apparently knows how to. Yet I don’t think he’d have to—he’s innocent.”

“Okay,” Jackie said guardedly.

“It’s maddening. I’ve defended enough cases against the government where the government persecuted someone or scapegoated someone—a whistle-blower, whatever—so I know how they can do these things. How corrupt they can be. I once defended this guy who was fired from the EPA for whistle-blowing, basically, about this toxic-waste site. And it turned out his supervisor had forged and backdated personnel records, evaluations, to make it look like the guy’d had a drinking problem. When in fact he’d been a model employee. So I’ve
seen
this stuff happen.”

Jackie turned over one of the hand-painted ceramic dinner plates. “These are cool,” she said. “I’m surprised they’re letting us use them. You think they’re supposed to go in the dishwasher?”

“They didn’t say not to.”

“Can I be straight with you?”

“What?”

“Look, two months ago we both basically thought Tom Chapman was just this great guy—macho, good-looking, great at everything. Real
guy
guy. Good provider, great dad, great husband, right?”

“Yeah? So?”

“So now we know he was hiding from us. He’s got a different name, he has this creepy secret past—”

“Jackie—”

“No, wait. Whatever the truth is about these murderers, he was a member of this top-secret military unit that parachutes into places or whatever, into some foreign country where they’re not supposed to be, carrying false ID, shoots the place up, then pulls out. I mean, you want to talk about symbolic? He parachutes into your life out of nowhere, takes it over, carrying false ID—”

“Very clever.” Claire began scrubbing, with deep concentration, the detritus of Annie’s Alpha-Bits cereal encrusted on a bowl.

“And we don’t really know who he is.”

“Whatever they throw at him, he’s still the man I fell in love with.”

Jackie stopped and turned to look directly at Claire. “But
you don’t know who that man is
. He’s not the man you thought he was—he’s not the man you loved.”

“Oh, now, what does that mean, really? When you come right down to it? I wasn’t being fatuous or naïve when I said he’s the man I fell in love with. Whoever he is, I got to know him as he was, for what he was. I loved him—
love
him—for who he is, who I know him to be. Everyone has a past, everyone conceals something. No one’s ever totally open about their past, whether they’re hiding stuff intentionally or not, whether it’s their sexuality or—”

“And there you go, rationalizing it.” Jackie raised her voice. “You don’t know, bottom line, who he is and whether he did what they say he did—”

“I
know
he didn’t do what they’re charging!”

“You don’t
know
anything about him, Claire. If he could lie to you about his family, his parents, his childhood, his college, practically his whole fucking life, do you
really
think he couldn’t lie to you about this?”

Annie was standing at the entrance to the kitchen in her Pooh pajamas, sucking her thumb for the first time in years.

“Annie!” Claire said.

Annie removed her thumb with a liquid pop. She looked sullenly, suspiciously at her mother. “Why are you and Aunt Jackie fighting?”

“We’re not fighting, baby. We’re talking. We’re discussing.”

Accusingly, Annie said: “You sound like you’re fighting.”

“We’re just talking, kiddo,” Jackie said. To Claire she added: “I’m going to smoke a cigarette.”

“Outside, please,” Claire said. “I may well join you after Annie goes to bed.”

“I’ve created a monster,” Jackie said.

“No, you’re not tucking me in,” Annie told her mother. “Jackie is.”

“Oh, but can I? I hardly ever see you anymore—I
miss
you!”

“
No,
” Annie said loudly. “I don’t
want
you to tuck me in. I want Jackie to.”

Jackie turned back. “Kiddo, let your mommy tuck you in.”

Claire added, “Sweetie, your mommy—”

“
No!
You go work! Jackie will do it! Go
away
!” She ran out of the kitchen, her feet pounding up the staircase to the second floor.

Claire looked at Jackie, who shrugged.

“Go for it,” Jackie said. “You can’t blame the kid.”

Annie’s temporary bedroom was a guest room whose only personalizing touch was the toys she’d scattered about the floor.

Annie had already climbed into bed, looking at
Madeline and the Bad Hat
, sucking her thumb furiously. “Go away,” she said when Claire entered.

“Honey,” Claire said softly, approaching the bed and kneeling next to it.

Annie pulled out her thumb. “Go
away
! Go work!”

“Can I read to you? I’d really love to.”

“Well, I don’t want you to, so you can just go away.”

She replaced her thumb in her mouth, staring balefully at the book.

“Can I talk to you?”

Annie ignored her.

“Please, baby. I want to talk to you.”

Annie’s eyes didn’t leave the book.

“I know you’re upset with me. I haven’t been a good mommy at all, I know that. I’m so sorry.”

Annie’s eyes seemed to soften for an instant; then she lowered her brows, frowned. Still she said nothing. Claire had told her that her daddy was on trial, but how much did she really understand?

“I’ve been so busy trying to get Daddy out. I’m out of the house early, and I come home late, and I’m exhausted, and we haven’t done any of the things we always do. And I want you to know that I love you so much. More than anyone in the world. I do. And when this is all over, we’re just going to play together a lot, and go to the zoo, and get ice cream, and mostly just be together like we used to.”

Annie pulled the blankets up to her chin. Without moving her eyes from the book, she said sullenly, almost demanding: “When’s Daddy coming home?”

“Soon, I think. I hope.”

A pause; then Annie said grudgingly, “Jackie says he’s in jail.”

Claire hesitated. She was loath to lie to her anymore, and right now Annie, ferociously observant like all small children, appeared almost to be daring Claire to tell the truth.

“He is, but it’s a mistake.”

Annie frowned again. “What’s jail like?” She seemed to be demanding the details, as proof of Claire’s credibility.

“Well, they keep him in a room, and they give him his supper there, and they give him books.”

“Isn’t there bars and locks and everything?” Annie asked warily.

“Yes, there are bars.”

“Is he sad?”

“He’s sad he can’t be with you.”

“Can I go see him?”

“No, babe, I’m sorry.”

“Why not?”

Why not, indeed. “They don’t allow kids there,” Claire lied. Probably kids were allowed in the visiting room.

Annie seemed to accept this. “Is he scared?”

“At first he was, but now he’s not. He knows they’re going to let him out soon, and then we’ll be a family again. Let’s read some books.”

“No, I don’t want to,” Annie said. Claire couldn’t tell if Annie was mollified or not. “I’m tired.” She turned over. “’Night, Mommy,” she said.

*   *   *

Claire fell asleep on the sofa in the sitting room, surrounded by case books on military law and packets of nonclassified discovery materials.

At around nine she was jolted awake by the doorbell. She ran to get it, before he rang again and woke Annie up.

Grimes’s face was solemn.

“The decision’s back, isn’t it?”

Grimes nodded.

“When are we going to trial?”

“Can I come in? Or do I got to stand out here on the porch?”

“Sorry.”

“The arraignment’s in six days,” he said, removing his fern-green overcoat and hanging it on the hall coat tree. “That means we got to have all our motions in by then, or we should, anyway. We probably go to trial in a month.”

“Why did I even allow myself to think otherwise?”

“Because, underneath all your been-there, done-that, cynical worldliness, you’re an optimist. A cockeyed optimist.”

“Maybe,” Claire said dubiously. “You want coffee or something?”

“Naw. Not at night.”

“So this is it,” Claire said when they were seated at their usual places in the library office. “We lose this, we’re fucked.”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this from the appellate queen of Cambridge. It’s like baseball. Motions is your first base. Trial is second base. Then you got the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. Then Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. They get a single, the game ain’t over.”

“So now who’s the cockeyed optimist?”

“I’m just talking how the game is played. Lot of innings.”

“But this whole charade is ridiculous. The investigating officer’s finding tells any officer who might be on the jury that their commanding officer thinks Tom’s guilty. They’re not going to acquit after that! What’s that?” She noticed a piece of paper in Grimes’s hands.

“The convening order,” he said, standing up and handing it to her. “Take a look. You see who’s ordering the court-martial?” Grimes studied a fragile-looking porcelain urn on a white-painted wooden columnar pedestal next to the desk.

The letterhead said S
ECRETARY OF THE
A
RMY
. The letter was signed by the secretary of the army himself.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Why is the secretary convening it? I thought it was done by someone lower down on the food chain, like the commander of Quantico or something.”

“Usually is. That’s what’s interesting. It’s like they’re ordering this from the very top to send a message—you know, We’re not fucking around, this is serious shit.”

“No,” Claire said.

“No what?”

“That’s not the reason. There’s a legal reason, I’ll bet. A really interesting one.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s because General Marks, the chief of staff of the army, is involved in this. Legally, that makes him an accuser against Tom. And according to Article 1 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Rule of Court-Martial 504(c)(2), a court-martial can’t be convened by anyone junior to an accuser. The only one senior to the general—”

“Is the secretary. Right.” He traced a pattern on the urn, nodded. “Right.”

“And what’s this list?” Claire said, still looking at the letter. “Is this the jury?”

“Yeah, only in a military court they’re called the ‘members.’”

“I want all these guys checked out for any glitches. Any biases. Anything we can use for voir dire. How come all these guys are commissioned officers? Tom was a noncommissioned officer, that’s lower rank. Don’t we want some senior NCOs on the panel?”

“If we want senior NCOs, we can request it. But I think we’ll get a fairer shake if we stick with officers. They’re more inclined to look at the evidence, in my experience.”